Saturday, January 14, 2012

Gearing up for the 2012 Tasting

The 2012 Chocolate Tasting is on! This year's theme is small batch chocolate makers, and our plan is to pit the newly expanding local chocolate scene in America against the best of the international chocolates from 2010. It's going to be epic!

We've got a delicious lineup of chocolates, and are adding more as your suggestions come in. Please provide your chocolate suggestions as early as possible! The tasting is only open to bean-to-bar manufacturers, and only to their pure chocolate bars (no flavored chocolates, even hazelnut). Chocolates will be grouped by category: Milk, Dark (no milk, up to 70% cacao), and Super Dark (over 70%). In the interests of not completely overloading everyone, we'll try to keep things down to 50 total chocolate types. Here's the list of 2012 chocolates, so far.

What is this?

This is what happens when a chocoholic mathematician dabbles in statistics. This blog presents an analysis of five years data from a Chocolate Tasting Party. Chocolates are cut into small (~2g) squares, and divided into categories (Milk, Dark (less then 70% cacao), and Super Dark (70% and up). Within each category, chocolates are randomized and codenamed with the names of local birds, so that the tasting is blind. Participants (of whom there are usually 40-50), rate each chocolate they taste on a numeric scale, and the results are anonymized.

What to Buy

Our conclusion after ~5800 chocolate tasting data points and 5 years of tasting: buy Swiss chocolate, preferably from a company at least 50 years old, that sources their beans in Central or South America, with low sugar, high saturated fat, no artificial additives and a cacao content of 25-30% for milk chocolate, 45-50% for dark, or 70% for super dark. Price is no indication of chocolate quality.